WTW71: UN Report Says Women Have Lost "900 Medals to Trans-Athletes." It's Bullshit.

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:03 Clip: What's so scary about the woke mob, how often you just don't see them coming.

0:00:11 Clip: Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism, and you see woke principles being pushed.

0:00:19 Clip: Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down. The woke monster is here, and it's coming for everything, everything, everything, and everything. Instead of go -go boots, the seductress green M&M will now wear sneakers.

0:00:41 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke. This is episode something or other. I'm Thomas Smith. I'm here solo because during the holidays, turns out it's impossible to have your kids home and both work what is more than a full -time job. So you might notice that not much dub to dub this month, and that sucks. However, I do want to tell you this. We are working on a very exciting series with other people. So don't worry. We have help. And it's going to be so good. Seriously, we've already recorded for hours and hours, and we're probably going to redo some stuff because I want it to be very good. It's a great topic that I think will really resonate. It's perfect for the show, and it's so fun to be working with experts who are really cool, talented, and smart. So that's exciting. That's in the works. It'll be out hopefully next month. We'll see. But for today, I wanted to take on like an a la carte debunk, and it's an important one. You may have heard about what's going on with the FFRF. So that's the Freedom From Religion Foundation. It's an organization that I used to be, certainly used to be more positive on back in the day. Yeah, I don't want to get into it, but a lot of reasons why I still, you know, largely just like broadly speaking, support them in their mission, but haven't like directly had much involvement. And today I thought I was going to talk to you about their apology for what happened and talk about apologies that that are almost never good enough by anybody and why that just perpetuates a problem where, you know, it's this dynamic where someone does something, does a terrible apology. A bunch of people like me don't accept that apology because it's terrible. Like it doesn't actually, I'm, I am so into accepting genuine apologies and there's been a handful, there's been a handful. I am all about accepting genuine apologies, but when people say, well, well, I'm sorry that you're an idiot. And then, you know, essentially, and it's like, well, no, that's not an apology. And then they do the thing where they go, I apologize and people still won't accept it. It's cancel culture. They won't be happy until I'm dead. And it's just this really frustrating dynamic that obviously just feeds back. It's a feedback loop. Like it gets out of control, you now. And it drives this feeling the woke left are cancel culture people who will never accept anything. But what's really happened is people haven't accepted responsibility and actually apologized. And so appropriately, if someone, you know, if someone does whatever, someone wrecks my car, someone runs into my car and they go, well, I'm sorry you parked it there. It's like, okay, I am not, there is no time. If they do that and then I say I don't accept that and they get more mad at me, there's no time at which I will be like, oh, okay, I guess I now accept your not apology. You know, there's never a time where that will make sense. And that dynamic happens so much. So I thought I was going to talk about that because the FFRF's apology for, oh I didn't even tell you the thing, they decided to post an asshole extraordinaire, someone I've been long just hated, one of the the most hateable people jerry coin just a just because he himself is just full of hate. I don't hate people for no reason, but this guy has, over a decade, this guy's been posting just, you know, conservative, um, socially conservative, uh, anti-whatever, anti-you-name-it, I mean, just, just all the culture war stuff and he's been on the in my opinion incorrect side of it and he pretended pretended to have this like freedom of speech stuff that they always do. Very early on, I tried to talk to him several times back when I was, by the way, back when I was not particularly like a woke guy, you know, like I was just into having conversations. I hadn't really made up my mind on a lot of things and he was too cowardly to do that because these kind of tiny men men, that can only function with the victim complex of saying they're never given the chance to talk. They only function in that mindset, in that victim mindset. The biggest victims in the world are these little men, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins. They never will actually talk to somebody who disagrees with them. They're too cowardly on these issues. Weirdly, they might when it comes to religion, but they won't when it comes to this. It's very weird. Never happens. Anyway, they have a blogger who had written an article just, again, this is, and I don't want to belittle any of this, but this is not a big deal. This is a blog on the FFRF. It is a perfectly fine thing. It's good. There are lots of blogs. It's good to have one. It's not

0:05:46 Thomas: Making massive waves. This is, again, a fine line. I'm not trying to denigrate it, but also, so I want to emphasize that this is, in the scheme of things, not a big deal. Someone wrote a lovely blog called What is a Woman from the Direction of Questioning Assumptions about Gender. There's a non-binary person writing about their identity and their experience and some of the difficulties and rigid definitions of gender. Perfectly good article. Nothing, there's really no reason to make any big deal about this. But Jerry Coyne turned out to have been on the honorary board of the FFRF. This honorary board, which I think Hemant Mehta on Friendly Atheist really nails this, is meaningless now. I mean, these are the kinds of things that you do to try to promote your organization. That's all it is. And so back when this first started, I imagine having Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, and Steven Pinker on your honorary board might have made sense. They couldn't be less relevant now to anything. Anything, but least of all to any actual activist work. They don't do that. They're not a part of any real activist work, especially Richard Dawkins. Anyway, point is Jerry Coyne, who apparently was still on this board at that time, insisted on writing a blog post countering this trans-friendly perspective. And it's just the typical crap. It's just a misinformed anti-trans crap and they decided to publish that and then they got some backlash and then they apologized and the apology was pretty weird it wasn't it on a scale of one to ten, where, like, ten being that's the worst apology. Well, which way should I go, on a scale of one to ten, I will say one being the worst apology ever and ten being fantastic to the point where you're like, wow, that's amazing, you not only are you in my good graces, but you're higher in standing than you were, you know, which has happened a time or two. Like if you, people give a really good apology, you know, this is like a, it's a five, you know, it is a six. It's not, it was like, all right, it is fine. You know, doesn't quite fully capture it, but it also doesn't make too many excuses or, you know, it tends to focus, this apology focuses a lot on the organization and it is almost like taking this personally, and instead of talking about what happened or why they posted it, going into a lot of detail and maybe kind of reconciling with that decision and why it was made and telling us about that. It's more focused on like, well, we're actually great. We've got, here's all the great stuff we've done, you know? And so that's not generally a good way to go with these things because it just reads as defensive. It sort of reads as like, you know, if I've done all these good things, then I get, then you can spot me one bad thing sort of thing. And I get it though. It is also a very human reaction to want to defend record. I think there's a way to do it that makes sense, maybe, but it's a fine line in these apologies. And I think what you have to do first is maybe talk about why the mistake was made and actually reconcile that. And then you could talk about like, oh, and, you know, as evidence that this is a good faith mistake, here's our record, you know, previously. And that, I think that can be done. But this apology was almost all that. It was almost all, here's our record. Here's why we've been so great on these issues. But anyway, I was going to talk about that. But then I dug into, I can't help it, I dug in to some of this. And in Jerry Coyne's little bullshit that's easily debunkable, you don't even need to debunk most of it, it's just illogic. It's just mistaking sex for gender, the same crap that always happens in a way that but simultaneously acknowledging that sex and gender aren't the same but then also deciding that someone making a claim that they are a woman is them making a claim about their like biological underpinning like, I don't know why somehow Coyne did all those things, like he both did actually recognize the difference between sex and gender, but also just made what is an unfair move to just assume that if someone is talking about the definition of a woman, that they are making a claim about biological sex and gametes and whatever, and not just gender.

0:10:22 Thomas: Like, it's a very weird thing to do. Like, I don't, it, it is like, on one hand, I want to be like, oh, I am going to point out how that is illogical, and it is, like, well, you already know, you are the one doing it, like you, it's clearly intentional. I mean, here, quoting from it, in biology, then after, you know, spouting a bunch of bullshit, in biology, then a woman can simply be defined in four words, an adult human female. What? I just have a question. Why would woman be defined? In biology?

0:10:51 Thomas: Why, why would that be a thing you even define in biology? Like I genuinely don't understand. And it doesn't, that also just passes the buck. So, so an adult, human female, okay. What's a female? How, what makes a human female? And then you can define that based on however you want. Look, biologically, yeah, you can talk about sex and the biological function and the gametes and the blah, blah, sure, that's fine. You can talk about all that. But why would woman have to also be that? Like in an essay where you've already admitted that that's not true, he simultaneously decides that's also true. It's just, it's just so weak. There's no, there's absolutely no justification for this. And there's so much to debunk about this. I started getting into it, but it's barely worth it. I mean, there's these terrible statistics he tries to reference to say that, like, transgender people are more often like sexual predators. But the stats he uses really don't demonstrate that at all. Maybe suggest even the opposite. It's just nonsense. But there was one thing that caught my eye that, and you'll hear why I get to this quote, according to a United Nations report on violence against women. Okay. Start there. According to a United Nations report on violence against women, okay. Quote, by 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports, end quote. Holy shit. What in the world is that doing in a report about violence against women, first off? Secondly, absolutely not. There's no chance because, because doesn't that strongly, strongly suggest that these are like Olympic medals? Oh, I should add, he was talking, he's referencing the Olympic Committee just before that. And so that transition also suggests it's Olympics. But the fact that it's 890 medals, look, I haven't kept super tight track of it. I'll go ahead and Google it right now. But I don't even know that there's been a trans Olympic athlete to compete and win a medal. I would be very surprised here. I'll Google it. All right. There have barely been. So there's a trans athlete who competed in weightlifting in 2020 and got last. There's also some non -binary athletes, but I believe they are competing in the category that I guess that they would have been assigned at birth. I think, I think all three that I'm seeing are, and that's all I'm seeing, maybe I'm missing something and there's been one, but the idea that there have been 900 medals lost, it gets quoted different ways. Of course, Jerry Coyne said over 890, and that was a quote from at the time that UN report, which, hey, just goes to show something labeled a UN report does not mean it's legitimate. There's many reasons that things can have that name acclaim and they're not all great. So this is one I had to look into because that is a whopper of acclaim. 900 medals?

0:14:14 Thomas: Look, I'm a sports person. You don't commonly talk about medals outside of the Olympics. I mean, maybe there's a couple other things you do, but you just don't really refer to stuff as medals beyond the Olympics usually. Seriously, I I'm sure you can find me a handful of examples, but I am a very sportsy person who watches all kinds of sports and does all kinds of sports. Rarely do you talk about medals in a non -Olympic context. So I'm trying to think like 900 medals. I mean, maybe, maybe in like World Cup stuff, I guess, like even then, do they, do they refer to it as medals? And then even if so, 900? So I do the usual thing. I just Just Google that and you get so many results saying a UN study reveals transgender athletes have won nearly 900 medals over their female competitors. And this is just, it's the usual, it's the reason we do this show. If you Google, that's everything. Every single fucking thing is UN report and UN study, even a study guys, the UN study reveals, as I said. And nowhere is there the actual truth, which is when you go to this UN study, it's not at all any of that, none of that. It's just propaganda. And I track it down and it's not just violence against women, it is actually violence against woman in sports is the name of the thing. Which is, isn't that a little misleading? So Jerry Coyne referenced it as a United Nations report on violence against women. But it's a little bit misleading to not include the last word there, because there's a report on Violence Against Women in Sports, which is a different thing. It's a more specific thing. And what's amazing is in this same thing that talks about, you know, trans people and in Jerry Coyne's article talking about trans people being predators. Wouldn't you know it, so much of the actual violence and sexual violence and all that against women's sports is at the hands of men, not trans men, just cis men. Larry Nassar is referenced. And somehow they use that, I've seen it, if not in this report, in some other sources as a way to justify their transphobia. Like, look, girls are vulnerable. Okay, just look at Larry Nassar and what he did. And so therefore they're vulnerable. So we cannot let trans women in. And it's like, they literally use the violence of cis men to justify the exclusion of trans women,

0:17:11 Thomas: Which is just shitty. Okay. So let's go to the relevant part. Cause this is crazy. I'm still like, yeah, okay. Somehow this has the UN label attached to it. I haven't gotten so far as to really look into that or why this came to be or who's doing this. But it does have the UN moniker. And I'm looking at the relevant section here. I found the quote. Ready? According to information received by 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports. Isn't that weird that Jerry Coyne started the quote right after that. That's, I mean, again, it's just a little, what a, what a random that all the little things go in the same direction. In fact, Jerry Coyne deceptively capitalizes that so that it looks like a sentence. So his quote was, quote, capital B, by 30 March 2024, over 600, you know, the thing I read, when the actual report says, says, according to information received, comma, lowercase b, by 30 March 2024, which, you know, again, these are all these little intentional things that tell me this person knows what he's doing. Jerry Coyne knows that this is bullshit, I think. Otherwise, why would he just, that's just so weird to coincidentally do these little indicators. Because if I see something that says by March 30th, March, you know, it starts there and it says what it said versus if I see according to information received, that's like, if that's cited in sources, I don't, that's, I'm skeptical, information received. Well, that's far from a study that you're doing. And I look, it's got the footnote, you know, it's whatever, note 29. Okay. I'll go down and look at what note 29 is. Submission from Women's Liberation Front, comma, International Consortium on Female Sport, and Diane Post on behalf of Lavender Patch. I can't, I think those are three different things. I don't know, but it doesn't matter. I found the ones that matter. But yeah, Women's Liberation Front, I have to imagine that's going to be a bias source. And sure enough, this quote unquote UN report, they just ask for submissions. It's a weird thing that I don't fully understand, but they just ask for submissions and then you can just say whatever. And then they're like, all right, we've received this information. We'll include it in our report, which is not a reliable way to do things. But I still had to keep going and track down the source, and I eventually did. The source of this claim of the 900 medals, roughly, that is everywhere, it's cited as, you know, a UN study, which it's not, I track it down to a website, shewon.org. This website is dedicated to archiving the achievements of female athletes who were displaced by males in women's sporting events and other type of competitions expressly for women. One day soon, we hope their accomplishments will be formally recognized. And that's what it sounds like. So they're tracking what they allege is women missing out on medals. Now, here's what I love. The list now is it's higher. Wouldn't you know it? Number of female athlete, 742. Number of medals, 1,060 now we're up to. And on medals, it's got a little asterisk. That's weird. Number of medals has an asterisk. And the asterisk says, or records, scholarships, or other opportunities.

0:20:55 Thomas: That's, oh, wow. Okay. They've lost on 1,062 medals or, you know, like some other stuff, like just other things as well. That's just, what are you talking about? Okay, fine. So let's look at this and it gets worse. So first off, you got sports on here. We're like, I don't, okay, disc golf. Is there a big male advantage in disc golf? Maybe, I guess distance, sure. Maybe there's something. Fencing, you got golf. You got mountain biking. Is that one where there's a big advantage? Poker? Is that when where there is a big advantage to being a man? I don't even know why that, why would that be? Poker? Pool? You know, skiing? I don't, I mean, okay. Then it gets, and you get to stuff that's really fun. Scrolling down, not even that far, I see dance, parentheses, Irish.

0:21:52 Thomas: Sorry, Irish dance is a thing that if you're a man, you have this big advantage over women or something? I don't even understand. Okay. But as I look at this list, one thing that becomes clear, I keep seeing repeats of events, which is weird. Cause again, if we're trying to brag about how it's, it's so many women, it's so many medals. That's not, but whatever. Why would the same event be listed often three, four, five times in a row with different names? I realized, oh yes, here's what they do. Folks, here's what they do. If there was a trans athlete who got, let's say, first in something, not a medal, but whatever, first and something, they list everyone after that and that they were displaced by one and they call that a medal that was quote unquote lost. So first example, like highest on the list, I don't know how this is sorted. Oh, I guess I can sort like, well, you can sort it however you want, but like the numbering system is very bizarre. I don't know what the numbers, maybe the order submitted, but but then they're out of order anyway, whatever. I look at the top one, it's golf, the same event, three medals were lost, three women, and it's like, okay, a trans athlete won that particular golf tournament, which was not the Olympics, which was not the LPGA Tour even, which is something we're already past where any conservative would, would I ever really give a shit? Because nobody, none of these people give a shit about women's sports in any real way beyond just using it as a tool to be horrible to trans people. This is a qualifier of a qualifer, like for the, maybe to get on the LPGA tour and a trans woman won one tournament. And so whoever got second, they should have gotten first. Whoever got third, they could have gotten second. Whoever got fourth, they would have gotten third. And that's three things, and you look and it's a ton of that. Like it's all, so each, you can, you can essentially divide this by three, uh, at the very least, because every single thing has at least three. I mean, I see a couple with two here just scanning through, some with more than three, so that's overstating it to say the least. So that means one trans person in a sporting event, if they do well, displaces everyone. And you count that as like three different medals that were lost. That seems a little misleading, especially since none of these are Olympic events. Why would you even call it medals? None of these, they're not medals. Anyway, it's the whole thing is bullshit. I went into a few specific examples and it's really, this whole thing is just sad and depressing, you know, because I don't know precisely what should go on with this particular hot button issue. I think there are ways that I could see it being potentially unfair. There are plenty of ways that I could see it being totally fine. I'm not an expert in this. I'm not in charge of any of it. I would have assumed that a lot of these governing bodies are doing the right thing and I thought they were like last time I checked in with this. But here's something that that really disturbed me, which is that I'm seeing a couple. I think I think Trump is emboldening a lot of these organizations to peel back trans rights in sports. And it's one example I looked at in particular, that top example, the golf thing. It's an NXXT women's classic, something I like golf. I've never heard of any of this. It turns out it's a feeder tournament to a feeder tour to the LPGA tour. I mean, we're miles away from, you know, being on the tour.

0:25:51 Thomas: Doesn't mean it's not important to these people. Of course, it's important, but it's Not the Olympics. We're not doing any of that. But I looked at it and I am so fucking bummed out by this. So there's a trans female golfer and she had been okay, had been doing fine on this, you know, little tour.

0:26:16 Thomas: She's someone who works a day job, obviously. There's no, I mean, there's very little money in women's sports beyond the top of the top, you Know, and it's sad. It sucks. In men's sports, it's a little different. You can make money a little further down. It's still very bad for a lot of people who are on the bubble. Like there's plenty of men who are very, very good at something, but are just not quite to the point where they can make it a career and they have day jobs. And I see it with a lot of hockey players that I follow over in the AHL. You know, you can make a decent living. That's men though. Women's sports, boy, is it miserable. It sucks. There's not much support, and beyond being, you know, the top of the top in the highest leagues or whatever, it's just miserable, like you're not making any money. This is not, so right away, the idea that this is, oh, I know what I'm gonna do, I'm going to fake transness in order to, check notes, win a single golf tournament that might feed me to a feeder tour, of enough? Yeah, like it's, it's just nothing. There's no, there's, there, there can only be a genuine love in this, is what I mean. Like this is someone who is genuinely trans obviously, and who is generally a golfer who this is, this is like, this has kept their life. Like golf has always been very important to this person. And they've always been trans. They, they didn't, they realized it pretty early on, this golfer. I'll go she. We got critiqued for using they for the trans female athlete at San Jose State. And that was a little bit tricky because we were also just trying to withhold identity. So I often just default to they when I just don't want to reveal anything about someone. But given the context, it was like, well, obviously it was a girl. So note taken. I I understood that note, but it was more about just trying to not identify anything about that person because we wanted to protect their identity because they've been doxxed and all that, but totally note received. This is, so I won't use they because this person uses she, her pronouns. She is a golfer. She is, uh, a lifelong golfer, uh she's had a lot of challenges in life and golf has been something that she loves to do. I read this really fascinating article about it. God, this made me sad. I mean, it really did because this is a woman who loves this game, who has always loved this game. She's played golf forever. I read the article. It's very important to her. It's something that she's done all her life. And like I said, this isn't a professional golfer. This is someone who was on the long road to maybe try to be a professional golfers. The tournament she won gave her $1 ,500. The entry fee was like $800. So she netted $700, which was not even close to what she had to spend on a caddy and the travel. She's not making money on this. This isn't a thing someone would do to just try to win a sport, like a fake trans identity to try to win the $700. Nothing. This was the first tournament she had won. And she was having a pretty good season, maybe going to get a tour card, not the LPGA, but the feeder tour card possibly, which is still, again, it's you're so far away from any sort of like financial success, not even close. And then mid -season here, the LPG announces new rules, a change in the rules.

0:30:09 Thomas: And in the middle, so like, that is, that is so sad to think about, like, in the middle of this person's efforts, in the middle of her efforts, all of a sudden they change the rules, and they pull the rug from under her, and she just won a tournament and now she doesn't get to play anymore. Like, it's, it's just really sad. It really is. And I, I don't know what she's supposed to do, too. She's not, she doesn't have, like, I've, I watched some videos. I've played a lot of golf. I'm someone who I don't, I've never, I haven't had time to play golf in like three years, but I did play a lot. I like golf quite a bit. It's really fun. I'm watching the videos of her swing. Hey, you know what she is? She's a fucking female golfer. She just is like there's, she doesn't drive it 350 yards. She doesn't, there's no huge advantage here. She should play with the women. She works really hard. She hits it very modestly, like distant, like that would be what you'd be worried about. You'd be worried about distance. Like, can you overpower, you know, the other women because you have some sort of unfair advantage? The answer is no. I know golf and I'm saying no. Like I'm, I'm looking at the distances she's doing. I'm look at her swing. I look at your body. Like this is, this is someone who should be allowed to play the fucking sport that she wants to play. And now she can't compete with the men. She's not a man. She doesn't have that kind of distance. She does not have that kind ability. She is not a woman. And now she just does not get to do the thing that was her thing anymore. And it is so sad to me. I genuinely feel so badly for this person. I do not know what she is supposed to do. She just doesn't get to do her thing that was her lifetime goal. And it was her lifetime goal, and even still, I mean, it's not like it was realistic she was going to be on the LPGA tour. I mean I don't think so.

0:32:17 Thomas: She's something like in her mid -30s or lower to mid - 30s and had just now maybe been able to get on the feeder tour to the tour. But like this is, I can really relate to having a passion like this, and I'm sure we all can relate to having a passion like this. But this is someone with a passion who's pursued it probably a lot harder than most all of us have pursued anything. I mean, this is Someone who has really put in the time her whole life and is just on the cusp of a little bit of something and then just has the rug pulled right from under her. I mean it just – it's really sad. Oh, I should say – I don't know. Again, I go into identity protection mode. Apologies, because I really just like worry about trans folks. Like I really do. Like I'm so just my knee -jerk reaction is to try to say nothing about the person. But it occurs to me that like actually, I mean, I think she has no problem with our audience knowing who she is. I mean she's out there. It's Haley Davidson is her name. And you can check her out if you'd like. But this article was really good. I'll link it in the show notes. And it just, boy, this is a fucking bummer. It's just a fucking bummer, man. It is really, I can't imagine. I mean, imagine she was in the middle of like a practice round and she gets this like news alert that the LPGA has just changed all the rules. And what I'm seeing, and this is just very preliminary, but what I am very worried about is this is not the only thing. I also saw a disc golf thing where they changed the rules. That was perhaps a year ago, so maybe not related to Trump. But I just, I feel like maybe the understatement of the century, we've lost ground on this. I've always hated the moral arc bullshit because it's just useless. I think it's a religious thing. Apologies to MLK Jr., but there is no moral arc of the universe. It is exactly what we do because there is no God, sorry. There's nobody ensuring that there's going to be a moral arc to the universe that always eventually goes up. It is what we make it. And we've lost ground on this bad. And I think that it occurs to me that many of these sports leagues are made up of very conservative people. And I think a lot of the sort of quote-unquote corporate pride stuff, you know, like a lot of the inclusivity that I saw in a lot of these leagues that seemed like, oh, that's good. They're, they're, you know, kind of cool. I think a lot, I think we're seeing some of that being peeled back and boy, that is, that, that has hit me hard. I'll say, I'm not trying to center myself or anything, but just like, cause I like to talk to you guys about my, you know, just, I've just honest about my experience all the the time. And as someone who is both into sports and cares a lot about the most vulnerable folks among us, it really hit me hard to have this realization that, oh, they might just not bother anymore. Like this might've been a thing where a lot of these leagues, a lot of these corporations, a lot, is what have you, we're making efforts to be inclusive, to do pride flag stuff, To do a lot of stuff that it's like, oh, well, that might be bullshit. But holy shit, once it gets taken away, you

0:35:54 Thomas: Realize how much scarier that is. You know, like, okay, maybe nobody should have been winning any Nobel Peace Prize for putting a rainbow flag on something. And indeed, sometimes it's really pernicious. It's like they're just trying to make money off of queer people without caring about them. You know, that's one thing. You're slapping the rainbow flag on stuff. You don't really believe, you know, it's one thing. And then when you see it taken away and you realize what that means, you realize that that means organizations who maybe they don't have good motivations. Maybe their motivations were just, hey, this is where society seems to be. So sure, we'll do the inclusivity thing. Even if they had the most like amoral approach to see them now say, oh, what? Oh, we don't have to do that bullshit anymore. Fantastic. Let's just not do that anymore because we don't have to. That hit me like a ton of bricks. And I worry that that's what we're seeing here with the LPGA tour and a couple other organizations that after this latest election, which you and I know was actually still very close, despite what the overall numbers show, it still came down to only a few hundred thousand votes was the difference. It always is, um, which, yeah, it's, it is a popular vote loss, of course, but it's not as much as you'd think, uh, and the loss didn't end up being by as much as people advertised, of course,

0:37:33 Thomas: But now this is being taken as a, as an okay, this has been taken as like, look, great, uh, America has rejected all this bullshit in their minds, and so we don't have to do it anymore. And that is, God, that's scary. It's really scary. So anyway, long story short, except not really.

0:37:58 Thomas: TLDR on the debunk. No, 900 medals haven't been lost by 600 female athletes or whatever. That's absurd. The number of medals in the sense that you would think that would mean is zero. No medals, no Olympic medals have been taken away. If you want to look at times trans athletes have existed and sometimes done well, then you could look at that. But I would recommend looking into the details of how that's counted, because I think this is absurd. It's obviously designed to cause as much vitriol toward trans people as possible. And it's really sad. And someone like Jerry Coyne is stupid enough or liar enough to even manipulate this a little bit, to sanitize it a little bit and to make it more plausible by just little adjustments here in how he presented it. I think that says a lot. I think that says a little something. I think it says a whole lot about people. I mean, I say this all the time and I mean it. I personally, just speaking for me, I want to be open to people's concerns on issues, because I think we really need to build right now. And I'm putting that on me. I'm not putting that On anyone else. I'm saying for me, if someone, if I talk to somebody in conversation, like, yeah, I don't think, you know, I don't think trans people should be allowed to compete.

0:39:28 Thomas: I'm, I'm going to listen to them and try to talk to them about it. I'm not going to kick them out of whatever we're in, even if I don't have the power to do that anyway. That's the mode I've gone into because of fear. I'm very scared that we're losing this. I'm very scared that it's going to snowball pretty quickly. So I'm in a mode of, hey, well, okay, let's talk about that. And I want to keep people close if possible or keep people in the fold if we can and honestly make converts. And the way to do that, in my opinion, is probably gentler than maybe our approach has been historically. And again, I'll just put that on me. Maybe I'm wrong about that. You do you. My point is I understand legitimate concerns. I understand feeling like you have legitimate concerns because honestly, there are concerns about this issue. You. There are, there's fairness is at stake and it's not super easy to come up with rules that make everybody happy. But the minute you're referencing fake bullshit like this and sanitizing it, that tells me, oh, okay, nevermind. Fuck you, Jerry Coyne. You are not a concerned citizen. You're not a just, oh, I just, I just have some concerns. I'm not, hey, I'm, I'm not a bigot, I just have some concern. No, you're actively participating in a disinformation campaign. You are sanitizing bad sources. You know what you're doing. You're a bigot. You're on a crusade. You're not a person who has legitimate concerns.

0:41:11 Thomas: You're not a neophyte to the issue who comes in and says, hey, I don't know. I'm a little concerned about fairness here. I have daughters. Would they be competing? Yeah, okay. Okay, if that's a genuine concern someone has, let's talk. Let's talk about it. But Jerry Coyne is not that. Richard Dawkins is not that. Steven Pinker is not that. These people know better. They're liars. They're fucking liars, they just are. They're anti -trans bigots and they are willing to ditch all loyalty to truth and facts for it, which is, that was the most disappointing part of, to me, of being in the atheism movement And looking up to some of these folks and then seeing that the moment they wanted to, they abandoned what I thought were their ideals. I thought their ideals were, even if we got to different places, which we could, we could get to differentplaces on many issues. But I thought they would do so by at least following some solid reasoning and checking sources and all that. But no, they don't. They're just as bad, if not worse, than your average religious person when it comes to these culture war issues and their sourcing.

0:42:25 Thomas: It's endlessly disappointing to me how just completely these men failed to live up to what I thought was the ideal in terms of skepticism, in terms of honesty.

0:42:42 Thomas: And sorry to, again, that's kind of centering me a little bit. Apologies for that. But it really is how I felt about it. And so they can get fucked. Jerry Coyne can go fuck himself. He's not interested in the truth. He's nothing. If there was someone who was interested in the truth and had a genuine misunderstanding or apprehension, we could talk. That's not Jerry Coyne. All right. I hope this little debunk was valuable. And like I said, we're really excited for what's coming on Where There's Woke. But it's long form stuff that's taking a lot of work. It's unfortunate we couldn't get out more this month. Believe me, we feel it a lot on our bottom line. It sucks. But that is what it is. We're doing what we can. And the holidays made stuff really complicated for us. And so we'll have more for you in January for sure. But thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for supporting. Really, truly, you're the best. We love you so much. And we hope you'll keep listening. Thank you.